Online buying, leasing and selling of products and services over computer networks have continued to proliferate with widespread Internet usage. In many cases, Internet web sites that facilitate these Internet sales transactions provide access to customer reviews (which are also referred to herein simply as “reviews”) that were submitted by prior purchasers of the products or services. The availability of these reviews may increase prospective purchasers confidence in purchasing a product or service, and hence may facilitate increasing Internet sales. The provision of both positive and negative reviews may also enhance a retailer's image for fairness and openness which may increase consumer confidence in the retailer. In addition, the reviews may be used by merchants, distributors and manufacturers to improve their products and/or services. For example, if consumers indicate via the reviews that they are particularly unhappy with the lack of certain product features or the overall product performance, manufacturers can modify their products to include the desired features or to improve the overall product performance.
In order to encourage purchasers to provide reviews, reminders may be sent out via, for example, e-mail to purchasers which request that the purchaser provide a review of the purchased product or service. Typically, these reminders are sent to the purchaser shortly after the purchase and/or the expected delivery date of the purchased product (e.g., within a month or two). Reviews that are submitted in response to these e-mail reminders as well as reviews which are submitted sua sponte by purchasers are then made available on the retailer's web site. The retailer's web site may also provide information that summarizes certain of the information provided in the reviews such as, for example, average overall customer ratings for a product or service and/or average customer ratings for certain specific product or service features, attributes, and the like (e.g., value, ease of use, reliability, etc.). It is desirable that the reviews obtained for each product or service generally reflect an aggregate opinion of customers who purchased the item so that the online retailer may identify products that have not been received favorably for possible discontinuation and so that manufacturers may receive feedback regarding problems or possible improvements for their products. Moreover, the availability of the reviews may attract consumers to the merchant site, resulting in increased sales. In addition, because the reviews may better inform consumers regarding the items that they are interested in prior to purchase, they are more likely to be satisfied with their purchases, thus reducing the number of expensive returns. For newly released items, the reviews may also be used by the merchant to forecast sales volumes and associated inventory needs.